Out of Time
by GliderPilot
Summary: The soldier. The man out of time. The Infinity Stones needed to be returned to their places in the timeline of the universe. Once that is done, one last task remains for Captain Rogers. To return himself to when he belongs.


Not mine. Loki would have shown up in that final battle throwing daggers and all "Did you miss me?". Here's hoping he'll be back eventually, one way or another.

Anyway, I in all honesty meant to write more of Finite, but then this happened. I do not do well trying to write on command.

X

_The soldier. The man out of time._

"How long will it take?"

"For him, as long as he needs. For us, ten seconds."

Time travel is so weird.

The Quantum Realm -a name Steve had always thought slightly tongue-in-cheek- was even stranger. Colors and shapes there were no words to describe and which passed through one's mind leaving no footprints. The nucleus of an atom, he could recognize. The world had only just begun to dabble in that world when he'd been shut in ice for an entire lifetime.

Then it reached 2014, that appointed number of trips Earth made around its sun since that time Jesus Christ died to save humanity and then _came back like a boss. Go and do likewise._ Was what they had done following God's commands, or building a tower to Heaven?

If this went wrong, he might find out all too soon.

Steve exploded back to his normal size, in the same patch of grass where nine years later, he'd dropped into the sub-atomic world. Infinity Gauntlet and Mjolnir still in hand. Exactly as planned. A tiny spaceship programmed to take him to Morag, Vormir, and Asgard, in that order, before heading back to Earth. One throw of a disk, and it was full-size and ready.

Off he went into the wild black yonder.

X

_The man out of time._

Careful with that orb.

Rhody pressed a button on his wrist controller and disappeared back to the future. Steve congratulated himself on making a successful modern cultural reference.

Nebula froze, as if someone had unplugged her. Then creatures from the final battle came and took her away, and it was time to drop off the orb. One touch of it to the energy field surrounding its designated home, and it snapped back into place. _The stones know where they belong. They want to go home._

Steve slipped away, just in time. Peter Quill, whom he'd met after the Reversal, had regained consciousness and would be arriving momentarily to steal the orb. Simultaneously, a few of Ronan's hired thugs, who happened to be Carol's old friends, had waited until Nebula was hauled away to put in their appearance. Their ensuing skirmish would be delayed by perhaps two minutes. Down the timeline, those two minutes would be absorbed by one less wink of sleep, one less toss of any random object before a scheduled appointment. A mere ripple in the river that was the universe's timeline. Nothing it couldn't handle.

Now for Vormir, and one lost soul.

X

Vormir turned out to be a mostly featureless wasteland. Not a bad place to hide something, if you only want it found by specific people. Clint had described a particular mountain, but it was probably the first place he would have looked, anyway. Something about it just stood out.

A black wraithlike shape floated out to greet him.

"Welcome, Steven, son of Joseph. The man out of time." The last possible voice he'd ever expected to hear, ever again.

"Johann Schmidt."

"That was a long time ago."

No arguing with that.

"How far we've both come."

"There are no flags, Steven."

"If this was the future you saw, was it what you wanted?"

The expressionless face didn't flinch. "This is my purpose now. What I want is... irrelevant."

Accepting that as a reasonable answer, Steve removed the orange Soul Stone with a gloved hand. "I don't suppose we could get Nat back." No harm in asking, right? Even though he knew the answer already.

"She is gone. It was her time, her choice. You cannot fix everything."

True that.

The precipitous drop down to Natasha's smashed body proved easy enough after a decade of deplaning at altitude sans parachute. Quicker than he would have liked, his feet were set firmly on a flat piece of rock. One of his closest friends crumpled at his feet. Purely by instinct, he laid a hand on her forehead. Memories shot through him: a mother who sold her for drug money; the teachers who turned her into a living weapon; the "doctors" adept at torturing, killing, and teaching her to do likewise, who destroyed a fundamental part of her just to make certain she could never give life to another. Only give her own life. Small wonder she'd clung so close to her adoptive family.

"_I'm here to pick up a fossil."_

Protecting him from Hydra. Trying to help him during the Sokovia Accord fiasco. Going on the run again because she let him save Bucky. Fighting her closest friend to the death.

Her own death.

One last whisper in his mind.

"_It's okay, Steve. I'll be fine. I really will."_

In whatever form Heaven took, Nat and Tony were bound to be bragging about who had the more badass "_For gosh sakes, watch your language!"_ death. Quicksilver, Peggy... They were still alive.

_You cannot fix everything._

Laying the Soul stone on the rock, he lifted Natasha into his arms. A few mummified remains marked previous attempts to claim the Stone and use it for some unknown purpose, but that would not be for her. She deserved better.

Carrying her broken body in his arms like a baby, he returned to his spaceship. Next stop: 2013, Asgard, and a woman he'd never actually met.

X

Rocket dashed out of Jane's room with a handful of Aether and half a dozen guards chasing him. Grimly, Steve noted that the majority of the Asgardians tending to one task or another on this soon-to-be-destroyed planet had since died. Reversing the Snap hadn't fixed that.

Why that bothered him more than the deaths in New York, or that pointless battle in Wakanda fought to protect one semi-person who was irretrievably dead anyway, he had no idea. Then again, if they had destroyed the Mind stone, there would have been only more irreversible battles, instead of a Snap that lasted five years and no more. Perhaps Doctor Strange had been correct that there was only one way for them to win.

Abandoning that mental foray for the moment, he walked up to Jane. She looked sick, probably from the Aether draining her strength. Even knowing she would ultimately recover, he had some regrets over putting it back into her. No choice, though. The red flow flooded back into her, and she barely seemed to care. Perhaps she thought it was a dream.

He gave her what comfort he could and left, leaving Mjolnir behind. Enjoyable as lifting it had been, even the hammer had its time.

What made him more _worthy_ during that final battle than the night Ultron became self-aware? Steve could only assume that the first time he'd been showing off, and the second, the world had depended on it. A far more worthy goal.

Perhaps the Gatekeeper watched him departing in his borrowed ship, perhaps not. He was no threat to Asgard. As he turned for home, something clicked.

Steve never wanted to leave Earth again.

X

Back home, or more accurately, the middle of nowhere on the planet he called home. Maybe someone would notice the ship, maybe not. In any event, it was quickly empty and pocket-sized.

Natasha he arranged to have buried in Arlington, with the dead soldiers. Fitting. He could only hope she wouldn't visit her own grave in the next nine years.

He remembered the name of a bank that still kept safety deposit boxes in 2023, and left the tiny ship in Clint's name, with a note to wait nine years. It would find its way to where it belonged.

Some voice in the back of his head told him to do the same. Not now. But after the last three stones, maybe.

X

"Ancient One, is it?"

The bald figure in yellow robes turned around with a satisfied smile as Bruce disappeared behind her.

"Not your friend, but it's good to see a promise kept."

The Time stone back in its place around the sorcerer's neck, Steve moved on.

X

What exactly the Hydra agents had made of his apparent about-face, the world would never know. He gave them the scepter back with a wink and a suggestion that they experiment on the twins, but no one else. Maybe he'd saved a few lives, maybe not. Maybe he would find out when he went back.

Maybe he would never go back.

A slight commotion that was Loki escaping with the Tesseract. Nothing to do about that this time, either. Then something clicked.

_There was only one way we could win. Loki must have had a hand in that._

"_The soldier. The man out of time."_

Two of his past selves were busy punching each other. The one with the more knowledgeable mind won, unsurprisingly. Why the universe allowed that, he couldn't say. Best not to push it.

A few quick presses of one button or another on his wrist controller, and he was gone again.

X

America in 1970-something was, quite frankly, strange, and that was coming from a super soldier who'd been frozen for nearly seventy years, fought aliens, evacuated a flying city, and gone back in time both before and after de-obliterating half of the universe.

Maybe Steve would have a look around after dropping off the Tesseract and a few replacement Pym particles. Maybe not. Interesting as this decade was, interesting as the modern world had become, if "interesting" was the right word, it wasn't where he belonged.

_When_ he belonged.

Cube back, particles back, a few security guards alerted, but they didn't bother arresting anyone since nothing was missing. All that remained was the Stark replica of the Infinity Gauntlet. That, he simply placed in the ocean, with a few flowers just because. _Let God decide what to do with it. And me..._

Flip a quarter he'd found in the gutter. Heads for forward, tails for backward? _But if I do what I'm thinking, forward is backward and backward is forward._ To his regret, the choice was between Bucky and Peggy. That was the hand he'd been dealt.

Heads for Peggy, tails for Bucky.

He launched the coin straight up as hard as he could. Several seconds of possibilities before the profile of a long-dead president pointed him towards the one woman he had truly loved.

Back in time is forward.

X

_A week next Saturday, at the Stork club. Eight o'clock on the dot. Don't you dare be late._

It had taken Steve much longer than anyone would have thought, but he was here, and Peggy was nursing a drink at the counter. Beautiful as ever.

In another timeline, she'd found a husband and had children. Perhaps he shouldn't have come. Why disrupt the good life she'd had?

But if she was truly meant for someone else, then whatever they'd had wouldn't work out anyway. He would simply return to 2023 and the life he'd had there, knowing that one door was forever closed.

Unless, of course, he'd been her husband the whole time. That was a strange thought, but it felt so _right_.

The clock chimed.

"Peggy."

She spun around, her glass slipping from nerveless fingers. Out of reflex, Steve caught it and set it back on the counter, just in time for Peggy to slap him across the face. Nothing he didn't deserve, admittedly. Her eyes were bright with tears.

"I thought you were dead."

All he could do was shake his head as she fell into his arms.

When they danced, he silently congratulated himself for not stepping on her feet.

X

They married on a beautiful afternoon in May a few years after the war ended. The same church her funeral had once been held in. Perhaps he would tell her that story eventually. Perhaps he would stick with the original story of "It crashed. I went somewhere else for a long time. But I'm back now, for good.".

Legend has it Bucky, Sam, and Professor Hulk are still waiting for him to come back.

The suit, the controller, and his trusty shield were tucked away in a box in the attic. He could, he supposed, have used them to avert future catastrophes, but ultimately reminded himself that the entire reason he'd gone back in the first place was to avoid branching timelines. It hurt to watch, sometimes. He told himself that was a good sign.

X

The children came when the stars aligned, as it were. Jimmy was born about three years after the wedding, and Natalie about two years later. Only two of them. Maybe each inherited half of his abilities. Watching them grow and learn about the universe was a feeling unlike any other.

X

He did consider, repeatedly through the decades, whether he needed to go back at all. One of their five grandchildren could have delivered the box to Sam. They might have enjoyed meeting a family legend. But in the end, he wanted to see them again. His once-family.

After watching from a safe distance when his younger self visited Peggy, after attending her funeral in the same church where they'd promised to love each other forever, he knew it was time.

X

_Steve? Did something go wrong? Or did something go right?_


End file.
